Footbag Hall of Famer makes his mark online

Saturday, October 3, 2009 | 12:01 a.m. CDT

Derrick Fogle performs a Hacky Sack trick at Speakers Circle on the MU campus on Sept. 17. Fogle, who frequents Speakers Circle each Thursday, has been kicking for more than 30 years. "I picked it up when I was a teenager and just never quit doing it," he said.¦John Schreiber

COLUMBIA — Almost every Thursday, a guy wearing red gym shorts
can be seen on Speakers Circle kicking a small, crocheted bag to upbeat music.

To his fans, he’s the Hacky Sack guy. To his followers online, he’s h4x354x0r, his user name on blogs and sites like Twitter and YouTube.

MoreStory

Related Media

Derrick Fogle says he is normally a pretty quiet individual. Footbag is the one thing that brings out his exhibitionist side. "Outside of Hacky Sack, I am a really an unassuming kind of person," he said.

Derrick Fogle takes a break to get a drink of water at Speakers Circle on the MU campus on Sept. 17. "I drink about a gallon and a half an hour," Fogle said.

To be successful at Hacky Sack, keep the bag in the air for as long as possible with a combination of kicks and stalls, which can be mixed to form tricks. Wear shoes with a flat surface above the toe and avoid wearing pants, which can restrict movement.

To everyone else, he is Derrick Fogle, a 46-year-old MU
systems administrator and father of two.

Since moving to Columbia in 1993,
Fogle has raised a family, been admitted to the Footbag Hall of Fame and
established a broad Web presence, hoping to inspire others and chronicle the
life of an aging footbag player and former world champion.

His claim to fame may be footbagging, a game
played by stylistically kicking around a small bean-filled bag trademarked as Hacky Sack. But his professional background is in
computers and technology, having graduated from Johnson County Community
College in 1984 with an electronics degree.

Fogle decided last year to merge the two.

Online, his accounts are connected under the
same user name: h4x354x0r, a computer-slang spelling of the term hacky sacker.

“It took me a while to come up with my
computer geek ID,” Fogle explained. “What’s gonna be so weird that it won’t be
taken but still be meaningful to me?”

In the span of a year, he has launched a
Twitter account for professional contacts, a Facebook profile for family and
footbag friends, a YouTube channel for the videos he shoots of himself, and a
blog where he journals his life and his footbagging.

“I started this footbagging journal at 45, so
I’ve been doing it for almost a year,” Fogle said. "My goal is to keep something
going for up to five years.”

As of Sept. 28, Fogle had
uploaded 45 videos to his YouTube channel, most of them
two-minute-or-less clips of him performing routines at Speakers Circle or Stankowski Field. His videos typically get anywhere from 20 to a few hundred
hits. A few even have ratings.

“I’d love to get more popular, and it’s a
vague dream to get this broad unique user moniker that I can establish online
and maybe even monetize off of,” said Fogle. “But I don’t expect that, I’m not
banking to be some ludicrous online sensation. That’s like winning the
lottery.”

Though his online presence is relatively new, he watched the dot-com craze of the early ’90s take off and considered taking part.

“That was back when you had to pay $75 a year
for a URL,” he said with a smile. “If I had invested a few thousand dollars in URL’s
back then, I wouldn’t need to work for the university today.”

Out of school, he worked as a printer installer
and repairman. It was through this job that he met his wife, Ida.

The two eventually began dating and Fogel introduced her to the sport. After marrying in 1986, they went on
to contend in tournaments and set records.

“I set the first men’s record for five-minute
timed consecutive (hits) with 857 kicks,” Fogle said. “My personal best
ended up being 954.”

Ida is the current record holder for the women’s five-minute consecutive with 804.

She describes footbagging as a
“blessing” to her and her husband.

While the Fogles
continued competing and setting records after the birth of their daughter 14
years ago, things slowed down when they had their son three years later.

“(My record) was set when my daughter was 2,” said Ida Fogle. “Then the second child came along. Having kids was like
weird math. One plus one equals five in terms of workload.”

Despite the Fogle lineage in
footbagging, it doesn’t look as though the sport is going to be a family
affair.

“The kids have tried it before, but I’m not
going to drive them to Hacky Sack,” said their father. “I’m going to drive them to
find something to teach them about passion and dedication. Hacky Sack did that
for me.”

Fogle first discovered footbag in the summer
of 1980, on a trip to visit his father in Dillon, Colo., Fogle, 17 at the time, accompanied his brother to a party where he saw a group of people kicking
a strange object around and soon joined in.

“I swear I was one of the worst people at
it,” said Fogle. “Just swing and a miss, swing and a miss.”

Despite his initial ineptitude, Fogle was
hooked. Motivated by the group’s encouragement in spite of his lack of skill,
he started practicing using small round
rocks so he could “hold his own in the hacky circles.”

“It was one of my first physical pursuits,
and I really liked it,” said Fogle. “I started practicing, and here I am almost
30 years later and I never stopped.”

After a few years, Fogle eventually got into
the tournament scene. The first footbag tournament he entered was held in
Kansas City in 1986, where he won the freestyle event.

Fogle credits footbag with more than keeping
him in exceptional shape for a man nearing 50 — he also said the sport helped
him turn his life around to a positive direction.

“Really, when I was a teen, I had a lot of problems,” he
said of his troubled past. “Getting into footbag was something I loved, and it
straightened up my act.”

Almost 30 years later, he hasn’t forgotten
where he came from. In his competitive years, he would often preach the
salvation of footbagging during tournaments; but now he realizes what
empowers you to change is less important than the empowerment itself. That’s the
message he hopes to share.

“I learned how much hard work it took to be
successful and stay that way,” he said. “The truth is it’s not going to do
something for everyone, but everyone needs to find something like that in their
life. That’s awesome.”

Yes, I am the Hack Man! I also designed, programmed, and installed the AV systems for 3rd floor Lee Hills Hall.

If you hadn't made the connection before, you're not alone. The dichotomy between my crazy, exhibitionist antics playing footbag; and the stodgy, bespectacled technician and boring, pedantic writer most people interact with me as; throws most people for a loop.

Ironically, I believe such a near-schizophrenic existence helps me understand the wholeness and connectedness of people and the world. For others, it probably just proves I'm bat-guano crazy.